Paganini's Ghost (16 page)

“And?”

“Nothing of any interest, I'm afraid. But I'll keep looking. You?”

“I had the forensics people go over the inside of the gold box and
the letter from Elisa. They found no trace of Villeneuve's fingerprints. It doesn't look to me as if he managed to open the box.”

“Unless he wore gloves,” I said.

“Why would he do that? He was a fine-arts dealer, not a safecracker. His prints were all over the outside of the box. If he'd opened it, his prints would have been inside, too.”

“He didn't work out the
scordatura
?”

“I think not. He wasn't a violin specialist like you. It would never have occurred to him that the actual notes of the ‘Moses Fantasy' weren't what was written on the page.”

“So the violin had already been removed. Villeneuve didn't touch it.”

“It looks that way to me.”

“Have you found out where he acquired the box?”

“Not yet. A jeweller is coming in tomorrow to inspect it. But I have a suspicion your friend Vincenzo Serafin knows more than he's letting on.”

“Serafin? Don't talk to me about Serafin. I got a message from him on my answering machine this evening, practically ordering me to go to his office tomorrow morning. The man is an obnoxious bully.”

Guastafeste was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Are you going to go?”

“I wasn't intending to. I thought I'd assert my independence. Why?”

“What does he want to see you about?”

“Just a violin.”

Guastafeste was silent again.

“Antonio?” I said. “What is this?”

“Go and see him, Gianni,” Guastafeste said. “I'll come with you. I'd like a word with him, and face-to-face will be better than on the phone.”

“A word with him about Villeneuve?”

“I spoke to him yesterday morning, if you remember. He said he knew nothing about why Villeneuve was in Cremona, said he wasn't doing business with him.”

“And he was?”

“I don't know for sure. But we've got the phone records from the Hotel San Michele now. François Villeneuve phoned Serafin on Thursday evening, and again on Friday morning. I'd like to know what they talked about. Oh, and while we're on the subject, we checked the phone records at the Hotel Emanuele. A call was put through to Yevgeny Ivanov's suite yesterday afternoon, at three-forty-six, when Ludmilla was out shopping.”

“You know who the call was from?” I asked.

“It came from the Hotel San Michele,” Guastafeste replied. “From Vladimir Kousnetzoff.”

W
e drove into Milan in an unmarked police car. Guastafeste has none of my qualms about big-city traffic and, as far as parking is concerned, he has the policeman's careless disregard for what he sees as minor inconveniences. He leaves his car wherever he pleases, in Cremona and elsewhere—and not just his police vehicle but his private car, too. He gets parking tickets, of course, but never pays them—and never gets fined for not paying them. His colleagues are all the same. Somewhere in the
questura
, I imagine, there is a room that is knee-deep in paper, all the various tickets and summonses that officers have accumulated over the years and ignored.

We headed across the River Po to the A21, then joined the A1 outside Piacenza and went northwest towards Milan at a steady 140 kilometres an hour—greater than the speed limit to satisfy Guastafeste's professional pride, but moderately restrained in deference to the nervous, elderly passenger by his side.

“Any news of Yevgeny Ivanov?” I asked.

Guastafeste banged on the horn and flashed his headlights at the van in front of us, then sped past as the van pulled over into the inside lane.

“Not a thing. We've circulated an alert to every police force in the country, telling them to watch out for him. Airports, seaports, and border posts have been notified, too.”

“And Kousnetzoff?”

“No sign of him, either.”

“You think Yevgeny's with him?”

“That phone call on Monday makes it more likely. Kousnetzoff phones the Emanuele. Ludmilla is out. He speaks to Yevgeny; maybe they arrange to meet. But if Yevgeny
is
with him, he's there of his own free will. All that stuff about abductions, that's just Ludmilla getting overexcited. An agent wouldn't kidnap a potential client; that would be ludicrous.”

“And if he's not with Kousnetzoff?”

“That's trickier. We have to decide whether we go public, notify the media, get Yevgeny's photo in the press, on television. Fortunately, that's not my decision. The
questore
will have to make that call.”

Guastafeste eased on the brakes as we came up behind a small Fiat Panda. He hammered on the horn again, but the Panda stayed where it was, crawling past the lorries in the inside lanes before finally pulling over to let us pass.

“I've been thinking overnight,” I said. “About the gold box, the violin it must once have contained, Elisa's letter to Paganini. What happened to the violin? Villeneuve didn't manage to open the box, but someone must have taken the violin. Who?”

“The box could have been empty for years,” Guastafeste said. “Maybe Paganini himself disposed of the violin.”

“There's another mystery, too,” I said. “The piece of music Elisa refers to in her letter, the piece of music that Paganini wrote for her in Lucca. His ‘ghost,' she called it.”

“I remember.”

“A Serenata
Appassionata
. I can't find any mention of it in any
books on Paganini. Castellani didn't know anything about it, either. It appears to have gone missing, too.”

“Is that significant?”

“I don't know. But it's intriguing. What if someone were looking for this ‘ghost'?”

Guastafeste looked across at me sharply.

“You think Villeneuve's killer may have been after a piece of music?”

I shrugged.

“It's possible.”

“A missing composition by Paganini. Would that be valuable?”

“Maybe.”

“How valuable? Thousands? Tens of thousands?”

“Certainly thousands,” I said.

“But not more?”

“Paganini wasn't a great composer. A long-lost composition by Mozart or Beethoven, now that might fetch a fortune at auction. But a Paganini? I'm not sure. His name alone is worth something. He seems to fascinate people. There may well be collectors of Paganiniana—and there are quite a few of those—who would pay a lot of money to own one of his compositions.”

“But would they kill for it?”

I didn't reply. We were on the outskirts of Milan now. The road into the city centre was solid with slow-moving or stationary traffic, but Guastafeste had no intention of waiting patiently in line. He rolled down his window, took a portable flashing light from a clip under the dashboard, and hooked it out through the window, attaching it to the car roof by its magnetic base. He flipped the switch to turn the light on and another to activate the siren, pulled over on to the wrong side of the carriageway, and accelerated. I hung on to the door handle, watching the scenery flash past outside.

Guastafeste turned his head and grinned at me.

“I know it's childish, but I always get a kick out of this.”

“Try to keep your eyes on the road, Antonio,” I said a little hoarsely.

“This the first time you've done this?”

“Yes, but it's never too late to get killed in a multiple-car crash.”

“Relax, I know what I'm doing.”

“You may be right. But does everyone else know what you're doing?”

Guastafeste braked hard and veered back to the right side of the road as a huge articulated lorry loomed up in front of us.

“Are you allowed to do this in Milan?” I asked. “Being a policeman from Cremona.”

“Strictly speaking, no, it's outside my jurisdiction.”

“What if the Milanese police catch you?”

Guastafeste winked at me.

“Be serious. The Milanese police
catch
me?”

He lurched back out across the carriageway and overtook a few more crawling cars before swerving back in time to skip a red light through the Porta Romana. He slowed down then and removed the flashing light from the car roof. We negotiated the inner ring road at a sedate twenty kilometres an hour and turned down the Via Manzoni towards Vincenzo Serafin's office.

The narrow side street near La Scala on which the office is situated is technically a no-parking zone, but Guastafeste interpreted the regulations as not so much a prohibition as a tentative suggestion. He pulled to the side of the road, then, to compound his transgression, drove up over the kerb and stopped the car with the two nearside wheels on the pavement, blocking the path of pedestrians.

“Here's how I want to play it, Gianni,” he said. “You go in by yourself. How long do you reckon you need to complete your business with Serafin?”

“Fifteen minutes, maybe twenty. It depends on how much he talks.”

“Okay, I'll give you twenty minutes, then come in. He'll be more at ease with you there. I might catch him off guard.”

I opened my door and climbed out. Serafin's violin-dealing business has a shop frontage at street level, but there is nothing in the shop except a desk and chair occupied by his haughty blonde receptionist,
Annalisa. She glanced at me without interest as I walked in, then turned her attention back to the glossy fashion magazine she was idly flicking through. She has worked for Serafin—and I use the term
work
loosely—for several years, but I have yet to figure out exactly what she does. She has no computer. She does not appear to write letters or file invoices. She seems to be a sort of “trophy” receptionist, a status symbol that affirms Serafin's position as a successful businessman. She is certainly a decorative addition to his establishment, but then, so would be a vase of flowers—and the vase would probably be more productive.

“I'm expected,” I said.

Annalisa looked up again, as if she were surprised that I was still there.

“Your name?”

I choked back the curt retort that was rising in my throat. I'd been there dozens of times. She knew perfectly well who I was, but this was her way of bolstering her self-esteem, of reassuring herself that others could be as insignificant as she was.

“Gianni Castiglione,” I said with icy politeness.

“Ah, yes, you may go up.”

“Thank you.”

She reached under the desk and pressed the hidden button with one of her varnished talons. A door at the back of the room clicked open and I walked through into the small hall, where a security man in a suit sat on guard outside Serafin's inner sanctum—the soundproofed music room where he keeps his stock of violins. I nodded at the man and went upstairs to Serafin's office.

Serafin wasn't alone. His mistress, Maddalena, was with him, perched on the corner of his desk, her bright pink lips pulled together in an angry pucker.

“But you always let me, Vincenzo,” she was whining. “Why not today?”

“I can give you a number of reasons. Two thousand six hundred reasons, to be precise,” Serafin replied.

“It wasn't that much.”

“I have the bill in a drawer. I can show you it, if you like.”

Serafin waved me into the room, then continued his conversation with Maddalena.

“And the one before that wasn't much less. Fifteen hundred euros, if I remember correctly.”

“It was less than that,” Maddalena protested.

“I have that bill, too.”

Maddalena leant back over the desk, showing off her willowy figure. Her voice took on a more conciliatory tone.

“All right, maybe it
was
that much. But you can afford it, darling. What's the problem? You like me to look nice, don't you?”

“You look nice in the clothes you already have,” Serafin said. “Why do you need more?”

“Just this once. I promise I'll be a good girl. I'll get only a few things.”

“No.”

“Aw, Vincenzo, don't be such a spoilsport.”

Maddalena slipped off the desk and went round behind Serafin's chair. She put her arms round him, her face nuzzling the side of his neck. I turned away in embarrassment and went to the window and looked out. Guastafeste's car was directly below me, though I couldn't see Antonio. How much time has passed? I wondered. Five minutes? Another fifteen and he'd be coming in. I tried to shut out the voices behind me, Maddalena's coy and wheedling, Serafin's holding firm. I've negotiated fees with him often enough to know that once his mind is made up, he is utterly intractable. Maddalena must have known that, too, but she continued to niggle away at him until, frustrated by his intransigence, she lost her temper and started hurling abuse at him, completely oblivious to my presence in the room.

I looked over my shoulder. Maddalena was snatching up her leather handbag from the desk and walking away in a rage. She threw open the door, paused to fire one last parting insult at Serafin, then stalked out, slamming the door behind her so hard, I could feel the vibrations through the floor.

Serafin waited a few seconds, then said dryly, “Hell hath no fury like a woman refused a credit card.”

“I came at the wrong moment. I'm sorry,” I said.

“You weren't to know. Never get yourself a high-maintenance woman, Gianni. Sometimes they're more trouble than they're worth.”

“You wanted me to look at a violin,” I said.

“It's on the table over there.”

I took the violin out of its case and held it in my hands for a while. When you've been examining and authenticating string instruments for as long as I have, you develop an instinct for a fake. That sounds like arrogance, but it's really simply experience. All violins have a “feel” to them. You pick them up and you sense at once whether they are genuine or not. I say “sense” because it's very much an intuitive process. You cannot know for certain whether a particular instrument is by, say, Stradivari, or anyone else. You were not present, after all, when it was made. But you can nevertheless be pretty sure of its provenance. You can give your opinion of a violin's authenticity with a clear conscience, and that is all I am required to do. To give my
opinion
, based on knowledge and experience. My nose for a fake is not infallible, but I use it as a starting point—an initial impression, which a closer examination will either confirm or refute.